U.S. Designates Land In 6 Western States For Solar Energy Production

by The Author — last modified Jan 04, 2012 02:09 AM

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by The Author — last modified Jun 30, 2009

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) announced yesterday that it plans to designate over 1,000 square miles of federally owned land in the West for solar energy development. The 24 areas of land under consideration could generate 100,000 megawatts of electricity...that's enough to power 30 million homes!

Concentrated Solar

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) announced yesterday that it plans to designate over 1,000 square miles of federally owned land in the West for solar energy development. The pieces of land are scattered throughout 6 sun-drenched western states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah) and would be leased to companies looking to develop and operate solar power plants.

Currently, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is studying 24 “Solar Study Areas“, in land which is overseen by the department, deemed ideal for solar energy production. The study underway aims at fully evaluating the land for environmental and resource suitability for large-scale solar energy production. The objective is to provide landscape-scale planning and zoning for solar projects on BLM lands in the West, allowing a more efficient process for permitting and siting responsible solar development. Those areas selected would be available for projects capable of producing 10 or more megawatts of electricity for distribution to customers through the transmission grid system. Companies that propose projects on that scale in areas already approved for this type of development would be eligible for priority processing.

So What’s The Point?

The idea with doing all of this is to achieve two goals. One, is to ‘fast track’ permit applications from companies wanting to develop utility-grade solar power facilities by removing a lot of bureaucratic red tape that currently slows down the processing of these applications (we’re talking months and years here). The second goal is to obviously incentivize clean renewable energy production, development and expansion as these lands are prime real estate for efficient solar power production.

We Got Tha Powah!

Officials at the DOI are estimating that over 100 gigawatts of power could be produced just in the 24 Solar Study zones alone. Currently BLM has received about 470 renewable energy project applications. Those include 158 active solar applications, covering 1.8 million acres, with a projected capacity to generate 97,000 megawatts of electricity. That’s enough to power 29 million homes, the equivalent of 29 percent of the nation’s household electrical consumption. The BLM will continue to process existing renewable energy applications, both within and outside of the solar energy study areas.

So if this works out, it could significantly increase the renewable energy supply for this country. If you factor in the already filed applications along with the power production potential of these new BLM lands up for grabs, the net total of power being produced by solar is very impressive. It seems the U.S. government is finally realizing the tremendous potential the country holds for solar power. After all, many in the scientific and renewable energy communities have called the U.S. the Saudi Arabia of solar.

The Good: This new plan will hopefully act as a catalyst to speed up development and production of more solar-based energy. Lands that are ideal for this type of power generation will now be easier to gain access to. The power potential using solar on the BLM lands is no drop in the bucket.

The Bad: Though the aim with this plan is to remove red tape, but there will undoubtedly still be much of it. Still encourages centralized power plants instead of incentivizing or lowering solar costs for larger use by the public (residential, businesses, etc.). May encourage development on or through environmentally sensitive areas.

The Bottom-Line: Though some of the Obama administration’s actions, or lack thereof, have left many in the environmental community befuddled, i.e. still allowing mountaintop removal for coal, this announcement is more inline with Obama’s campaign promises and could help quickly facilitate serious increases in clean renewable energy.

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